Newsletter

September 18th, 2008

Love in the time of a Failing Economy

Jose Betancourt has been the maintenance manager of our hotel ever since our current general manager has had the helm. Ten years, that is. He preceded here her by eight years, starting off briefly in the laundry, then shifting over to maintenance. Which is to say that he was professionally fixing things when our dear leader first encountered him and so what she did was merely to recognize the superiority of the skill he was already practicing. Almost immediately she made a manager out of him, believing instinctively that she could rely on him to mend all wounds in and around her new hotel. A few years later, when the second hotel was opened, he was there, this time establishing the maintenance system for a whole new operation. She was right to trust him from the first, but she did not know quite how right until very recently. Earlier this year her oldest daughter moved pretty far away, the first of her children to do any such thing. She was a bit sad and Jose would find her crying, feeling a loss. And so her maintenance manager, the man she had trusted all those years to repair what was broken, stepped up to this problem as well. He asked her to be godmother to his just-arrived baby, offering a brand new child into her life, just as her own was leaving. This fact goes so far beyond any words I could find right now. Love, trust, respect. They’re all so inadequate. Openness like this is not the obvious choice in today’s world and I feel really grateful to Jose. This hotel has become a community, instead of just a workplace, because the people who work here are willing to make it that way. This is one of the best examples I could possibly give.